Some of the web related news from China this week.

• With a total number of 400 million active users as of December 2017, WeChat Mini-Programs is estimated to reach 500 million active users in Q1 2018. Being a critical part of Tencent’s WeChat ecosystem, Mini-Programs seem to be more and more promising in the past year with the development of e-commerce and gaming applications.
• The total retail sales of consumer goods in China reached US$1,859.6 bn so far this year (Jan-Apr), up by 9.7% year-on-year. Online retail sales of goods and services were US$403.74 bn, with an increase of 32.4% year-on-year.
• The cross-border e-commerce retail import market in China is expected to see US$79.9 billion in transactions in 2018 with an increase of over 25% YoY and reach close to US$100 bn in 2019. This market is led by Tmall Global (27.6%), NetEase Kaola (20.5%), JD Worldwide (13.8%), Vipshop (9.8%), and Amazon Global (9.1%) as of end 2017.
• China’s shared accommodation market generated a total transaction of US$2.27 bn in 2017, up 70.6% from a year earlier, according to State Information Center of China. Chinese millennials were the main user group of shared accommodation platform. Around 70% of them had received undergraduate or further education.